


don't give up (don't you quit on me)

by awkwardspiritanimals



Series: a team thing [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 14:10:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4922644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardspiritanimals/pseuds/awkwardspiritanimals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trip, Fitz and Jemma save each other.</p>
<p>It’s a team thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't give up (don't you quit on me)

She’s not expecting to see- well, she’s not expecting anything, up to and including getting swallowed by the giant space rock. But at the top of the long, long list of things she was not expecting to see after that happened, is Antoine Triplett, sitting in a cave and roasting something on a spit.

“Shit,” he says, when he looks up from his task and sees her, “Now we definitely have to get home.”

————-

Jemma is handling this extraordinarily well, all things considered. When he’d first gotten here, he had freaked out, punched a couple aliens, and cried, in that order.

Once he’d stopped crying and apologized to the aliens for punching them, they’d been surprisingly helpful, although the language barrier had been a bitch. They had relied a lot on pictures and pointing, and on the fact that this didn’t seem to be the first time the aliens had dealt with this. In the end, Trip had figured out enough to explain to Jemma about the gate and the cave when she came tumbling out of the back wall six months after he’d set up camp here.

“The people who created it have apparently been gone for so long that they’re basically a myth to the aliens who live here now, but every once and awhile, somebody shows up and they lead them here, wish them the best of luck. Showed me what animals and plants were safe for me to eat. I’ve just been waiting here since then.”

“This is a gate? And you’ve just been sitting here waiting for months?”

“It’s not exactly easy to open. And if there’s not someone opening it from the other side, when it opens here, you could end up anywhere. Or worse, stuck in the gate itself, from what I could figure out from what they were drawing and pointing at. _You’ll die a horrible death_ is surprisingly easy to understand in any language, apparently.”

“So how are we supposed to get home?”

“You said you got swallowed by a giant space rock,” he says, pointing towards the back wall of the cave, which is made of the same smooth black material as the monolith, “Which means that S.H.I.E.L.D. has the gate in their possession.”

“In a fiberglass case in the basement, yes.”

“And if you’re here, that means Fitz is there, trying like hell to open it.”

“But we hadn’t figured anything out about the rock! And even the Inhumans don’t know much about it except that it’s dangerous. Fitz doesn’t know we’re here, or that we need his help.”

Trip grins, “That’s where I come in. I’m a pretty friendly guy, and in the past few months the aliens have taught me a thing or two.”

————–

“You have to help her.”

Fitz whips around, and Trip is standing there, arms crossed, eyebrows raised. He closes his eyes, presses his hands against his temples, wills the hallucination away. He’d gotten pretty good at that after a while.

“You have to help her, Fitz.”

When he opens his eyes, there’s no one there.

————

“What did you just do?” Jemma says, catching him as he slumps forward. He didn’t realize it was quite so exhausting to catch somebody’s attention; the few times he’d tried it in the past, it had just been for a few seconds to catch a glimpse of the team, to reassure himself that they were okay. He’s going to need more practice.

“I talked to Fitz. Told him you needed his help. Not that he really needed telling, more of an insurance thing.”

“You _talked_ to _Fitz_?” she asks, and he nods, reclining back against the wall of the cave and snagging a bit of meat off the spit.

“Just for a few seconds. It’s not an easy thing, jumping across universes or dimensions or whatever.”

“Jumping across-?”

“I’ve been here for awhile,” he says with a grin and a shrug, “Now come on, sit and eat. You’re going to need your strength.”

——————

“Sorry I sort of cut and run the last time I was here.”

Fitz sighs, looks over to where his new hallucination is leaning against the counter next to him. Trip’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, dirty and a bit ratty, but he’s smiling, like he’d just gone off on an assignment that ran a little over schedule. Like Fitz and Jemma hadn’t waited at the edge of that hole for him to come back, smiling, probably making some bad joke about earthquakes. Like they hadn’t been disappointed.

How’s this for a bad joke about earthquakes: _if one friend is suddenly dead and the other is suddenly deadly, is there really anything left that’s not shaking?_

“You did?” he asks. He’s too tired to force the illusion away. It’s not real, and he’s sure it’s not good for him, but he’s tired. He’s tired and Jemma is gone and it’s so good to see Trip again, even if it’s only in his head.

“I’m getting better at this, but it might be kind of hit and miss for a while. Sorry about that.”

Fitz has no idea what that means, but he figures a person should probably accept apologies from their own hallucinations, as sort of a rule.

“It’s not a problem,” he says, and then goes back to the book he’s got in front of him.

“Light reading?” Trip asks, and then winces, closes his eyes like he’s got a headache.

“Are you okay?”

That has to be somewhere near the top of the list of dumb questions to ask an hallucination when you know it’s just a figment of your imagination.

“Fine. What are you working on?”

“It’s a book that the Inhumans had, about the rock. It hasn’t been very helpful, but it’s all I’ve got right now. It’s a start.”

“Good. Keep your head up.”

Getting a pep talk from your own hallucination of your dead friend is weird, but he feels a little better anyway.

——————

“How is he?” she asks, not looking up from her food.

She’s adjusting to life here, after a few weeks. There’s not a tremendous amount to do, and they both spend most of their time working on figuring out what they can about the gate, but Trip refuses to let them work all the time. They spend a lot of time finding food; Jemma mostly gathers plants while Trip handles the hunting, but she’s getting better with the spear he’d made. The other day she’d caught a fish, and even though it was tiny and she was well aware it wouldn’t make a meal for even one of them, let alone both, it had felt like an accomplishment and Trip had made a big deal about it, which was nice. The aliens that are native to wherever they are stop by occasionally, and while the language barrier makes pretty much all but the most basic conversation almost impossible, they’re very nice and have managed to teach the two agents to play a game that vaguely resembles checkers that Trip and Jemma usually play at night after dinner to kill the time when it’s really too dark to do much else.

“Okay. He’s working awfully hard, and I’m not sure how much help he’s getting. The team seems to be having to deal with a lot of stuff with the Inhumans from what I can tell, but I think Coulson’s leaving him plenty of time to try to figure the gate out.”

“How’s the rest of the team?”

“Tired. May’s still gone. Skye seems like she’s adjusting well. Or, uh, Daisy, is what she’s going by now.”

“That’s her birth name. What her dad called her.”

“Crazy guy who tried to kill me?”

“There was- You missed quite a lot while you were here.”

“Seems like it.”

Jemma manages to hold her tongue for five whole seconds, which she thinks is pretty admirable.

“Why didn’t you try to contact us? Let us know you were alive?”

She doesn’t want to fight with him, because she’s going to have to live in this frankly small cave with him, probably for months. Because she’s mourned him and missed him for months and she’s gotten him back. Because it’s Trip.

She also wants to punch him directly in the mouth despite all of that.

“I was wondering when you were going to get mad at me for that,” he says, setting his plate down and pulling the board for their game towards him. In the alien language, its name sounds roughly like an entire flock of geese, and Trip has taken to calling it Honk-Honk and trying very hard not to laugh at Jemma’s attempts to pronounce its actual name.

“You could have told us you were alive! We could have been looking for you!”

“I only learned the whole traveling trick recently, Jem. And I had no idea you guys knew anything about the gate, much less that S.H.I.E.L.D. actually had it. What was I going to do, send you guys off on a wild goose chase looking for a way to bring me back instead of letting you save the world a couple times?”

“It wouldn’t have been a wild goose chase. Not to save you, not to bring you back.”

“We’re going to get home now. We’re going to figure out this end, and your boy is going to figure out the other, and we’re going home.”

She tries not to blush at _your boy_ , but doesn’t think she’s very successful. Trip doesn’t say anything though, and she leans forward to set up her pieces.

—————–

“I don’t know what I’m doing. This is- I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Is it more embarrassing to cry by yourself or in front of an hallucination of your dead friend?

“You’ll figure it out.”

“What if I can’t?” he shouts, and that’s probably not going to draw any attention to him, shouting at the empty air next to him in the middle of the night.

“You’re Leopold Fitz. You’ll figure it out.”

“What if I can’t?” All the anger drops out of his voice. “What if I can’t help her because she’s not here? What if I can’t do it without her?”

“Without her? Fitz, you guys were best friends for ten years. You’re telling me you can’t hear her voice in your head?”

“That’s what got me in trouble the last time. Plus, I can hear your voice in my head, too.”

“Come on, man, you know that’s not what I’m talking about. If Jemma Simmons were here, right now, standing in front of you, what would she be doing? What would be her next step? What argument would you be having about whatever dumb name you want to give to the thing you’re going to build to help her?”

Fitz smiles, for the first time in what feels like a long, long time. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and listens. To the whir of the machines around him and the thump of his heart. To her voice in his head.

“She wouldn’t want me to give up. Jemma doesn’t give up.”

He’s needed to say that for a while. What’s more, he needs to say it to her. He’s going to start a list, right now, of the things he should have said to her, a month ago, six months ago, a year ago, ten years ago. And then when she comes back, Fitz is going to say them all, quite possibly just one after another. He has to get her back, if only because there are important things he needs to say to her. An unfinished story.

“Good,” Trip says, smiling, “What else?”

————–

Jemma’s crying. He hadn’t meant to make her cry, but he also didn’t want to lie to her about what he and Fitz talked about. It’s the only contact she gets with her best friend. When he’d told her about Fitz listening to her voice in his head,  she’d tried to hide the fact that she was starting to tear up, but there’s not much space to hide in their cave. When he’d reached out and pulled her into a hug, she’d come pretty easily and the tears had started in earnest.

He’s impressed it took her this long to have any sort of real breakdown, even knowing how tough she is. Jemma has been here for just over a month, five weeks, and he had made it roughly five minutes before starting to sob. And she hadn’t even punched one alien yet.

“I miss him,” she says, her voice muffled with her face pressed against his shoulder, sounding like she thinks she should be embarrassed about that.

He squeezes her a little tighter, “I know.” They sit in silence for a while before he speaks again, “What else do you miss?”

“What?” she asks, turning to look up at him, although she doesn’t lift her head off his shoulder. Trip shifts so they can sit a little more comfortably.

“What else do you miss? If there was one dumb little thing you could have from home that would make things better, what would it be? And no saying tea, I already know that one.”

“Toothpaste,” she says after a few seconds of thought, and he laughs.

“Are you saying that washing out your mouth morning and night with alien river water is not something dentists recommend?”

“What about you?”

“ _Sportscenter._ ”

“Really?”

“I’m a man of simple pleasures, Agent Simmons. Your turn.”

They play until she starts to drift off against his shoulder, and Trip shifts again so that they can curl up on the mattress type thing that the aliens had brought him when he’d first moved out to the cave. Jemma has one too, but he doesn’t have the heart to move her tonight.

He’s pretty sure she’s asleep when she surprises him by whispering, “I miss him.” She still sounds almost guilty about it, and he twists to press a kiss against the top of her head.

“It’s okay to miss him. I miss him, too. And he misses you. And we’re going to get back to him, alright? He’s reaching across the universe for you, and you’re going to reach back, and we’re going home.”

He doesn’t know if Jemma hears him, because she’s asleep when he glances down at her face, but he’s more than happy to say it again. As many times as she needs to hear it.

————–

“Are you ever going to propose any ideas? Jemma was at least helpful when I was hallucinating her,” Fitz says, and Trip can’t help but laugh. That sounded almost like a joke.

“Ideas? I don’t have any ideas. You give ‘em to me,” he challenges, and Fitz sighs.

“I could just open up the case and throw myself at the rock until it ate me too.”

“Not great. I’m pretty sure if you did that, Jemma would kick your ass for trying and then kick my ass for letting you.”

“You’re a figment of my imagination.” It’s been awhile since Fitz has so openly talked about how he thinks Trip is an hallucination.

“If you don’t think Jemma Simmons would kick the crap out of a figment of your imagination for letting you put yourself in danger, you don’t know her very well.”

Fitz laughs, and picks up his pen to start working on his schematics again.

————–

“You absolutely did not let him throw himself at the rock,” Jemma says, looking up from the Honk-Honk board sharply.

“I absolutely did not. I didn’t relish the idea of getting my ass kicked by a five foot tall scientist who knows how to use a spear now.”

—————-

Jemma is making a list, of all the things she’s going to say to Fitz when she gets back.

It had taken quite a while to communicate what she wanted to the aliens, but eventually she had hit upon a miming action that got them to bring her something that wasn’t quite paper and a pot of ink that smelled so foul she and Trip had agreed to only write outside of the cave. Most of it they used to record their notes about the gate, patterns and observations and theories, but she keeps a couple sheets for her list.

Things she thought he knew and so she never said. Things she didn’t even know she wanted to say until just recently. Things she’s been too embarrassed to say. She’s not going to be embarrassed about them anymore. Glancing down at the page on top, she blushes.

She’s going to try very hard not to be embarrassed about saying them.

Jemma has been here for two months, which means Trip’s been here for more than eight. The list is getting rather long, but she’s going to say every single thing on it. That’s a promise to herself she’s not going to break.

It’s a promise to Fitz too, however far away he might be.

————–

“What did you and Jemma do on your birthday? Traditionally?”

“Why do you all seem to think we had strange rituals together for every holiday? We’re best friends, not fraternity brothers.”

“You know what I mean. Come on, Fitzy, what did you do?”

“Got dinner usually, and then Jemma always promised to let me pick whatever I wanted to watch with no arguments.”

“How long did that promise last?”

“About five minutes,” Fitz says, smiling, but it’s small and soft, more nostalgic than actually happy.

“What did you do today?” _Without her_ is unspoken but ever present.

He shrugs, “Skyped with my mum. Daisy was going to make me a cake, but then there was an Inhuman thing. She bought the ingredients though, so I made it myself.”

“You had to make your own birthday cake?”

Another shrug, “I was probably better off for it. She’s pretty good at cooktop, but baking isn’t really her thing.”

They sit in silence for a while after that. Trip knows he should probably leave, save up his energy, but Fitz has seemed so lonely lately that he can’t bear to just blink out, not right now. He can stay for a little while longer.

“I think,” Fitz starts, and his voice breaks, “I think the others have started to give up. I think they think that after this long, after this much searching, that if we haven’t found her yet…” he trails off, swallowing hard.

Trip’s chest aches, for Fitz and for Jemma and the team and himself, but he squares his shoulders and pushes it down.

“But you haven’t given up, right?”

“No,” Fitz says, shaking his head, “But what if- What if I’m not enough? What if I can’t do this alone?”

“You’re not alone. She’s out there, working to get back to you. You have to know that.”

Fitz doesn’t say anything, and Trip steps forward, almost reaching out to tip his friend’s chin back up. Instead, he just holds out his fist, hoping Fitz will remember.

“And you’ve got me.”

Fitz looks up, his eyes lighting with recognition, but he still hesitates before he reaches out to cover Trip’s fist with his fingers. Trip can feel the exhaustion surge through him at how hard he’s working to let Fitz touch him, even just for a few seconds, but it’s worth it.

He hopes it’s a good birthday present.

————-

Trip’s hand feels warmer, more solid, than Jemma’s fingers at his shoulder ever had.

Fitz isn’t sure what that means, but he bends over his work with new energy.

————-

“I want to see him,” she says, and Trip sighs again.

“Jemma-”

“Just for a few seconds.”

“Jemma, the consequences of not getting it right- they’re bad. Just like _you’ll die a horrible death, your brain will melt out your eye sockets_ is surprisingly easy to understand in any language.”

“They think I can do it,” she argues, and when Trip turns to the three aliens who have been watching them, they nod.

That had been a good day, when they’d finally gotten the aliens to understand what that particular bit of nonverbal human communication meant. There have been good days here.

And yet.

Jemma just wants to see him. From across the universe, that’s a tall order, she knows this, but she’s not asking to talk to him or touch him. She wants those things, but she’s not asking for them. All she wants is to see him.

“For my birthday, Trip.”

That’s probably unfair. In all technicality, it is probably not her birthday here and they really have no idea if it’s actually her birthday on Earth still. But two days ago when Trip had visited Fitz, it had been September 9th, and so she thinks it’s justified.

Trip sighs, rubs at his face with both hands, and then looks her dead in the eye.

“If you die, Jemma Abigail Simmons, I am going to be _pissed_.”

They sit side by side on her mattress, and Jemma doesn’t say anything when Trip reaches over to hold her hand. The aliens seem to sense that something important and private is happening, and they back out of the cave with the sweeping bow type of motion that the two of them have figured out is some sort of respectful goodbye. More nonverbal communication translated.

Jemma sits up straight, squares her shoulders, closes her eyes with a deep breath and a squeeze of Trip’s hand. She concentrates like the aliens and Trip have told her, reaching out with her mind. And then she’s there.

She’s standing in the lab, and standing ten feet away from her is Fitz. He has his back turned to her, but he’s looking at something beside him so Jemma can see his face in profile. Without even thinking about it, she goes to move forward, closer to him, always closer. She’s so tired of moving away from him, of not being close to him.

She’s so tired.

Jemma starts crying before she even opens her eyes, and Trip pulls her into a hug without a word.

————–

“Because the Leopold Fitz I knew would never have given up, and if this is who you are now, I’m not sure I want to know the new you!”

Fitz probably doesn’t deserve to be yelled at. Not about this at least. At some point, after Trip and Jemma get home and Trip stops wanting to kiss the ground every few feet, he and Fitz are going to have at least one long discussion about the way a person treats their best friend when that best friend is trying to do their best in very difficult circumstances.

But he probably doesn’t deserve to be yelled at for this particular thing.

He hasn’t given up, hasn’t shown any sign of it, despite looking exhausted and vaguely sick and incredibly, incredibly alone every time Trip has visited lately. Trip can’t even remember what Fitz had said that had set him off in the first place, so it can’t have been that bad, but still. He’s been trapped on an alien planet for nine months, and if that doesn’t entitle him to a little anger, even if he’s misdirected it a little, he doesn’t know what does.

“Sorry,” he says, not looking at Fitz, “Just… sorry.”

“It’s a gate,” Fitz says after a few moments, and Trip looks up sharply, “I haven’t given up. It’s a gate to somewhere, and I just have to figure out how it works.”

“Good. Okay then. Sorry, again.”

————

“I want to talk to him.”

“That seems like a bad idea.”

“It’ll give him hope, if he knows for sure that I’m still alright.”

“He has plenty of hope that you’re still out there somewhere.”

“You yelled at him a few days ago for thinking about giving up!”

“Well, yeah, but I was just being stupid. He hasn’t given up. I don’t think he knows how.”

“It’ll help though, if I can just-”

“If your brain melts-”

“I can do this!”

And honestly, Trip thinks, if there is anyone in the universe, or universes, or dimensions, or whatever it is, who can do this, it’s Jemma Simmons. And if there’s anyone in existence that she can do it for, it’s Leopold Fitz. He sighs and sits down on his mattress, patting the spot next to him.

“You’re going to be exhausted. It takes a lot of work to talk, and you haven’t had much practice at jumping, so you’re going to have to make what you say count. Don’t die.”

“All good advice,” she jokes, but he can hear the nervousness in her voice and her hand is shaking when he reaches over to wrap his fingers around hers.

He stays quiet when they appear in the lab, even though Fitz has his back to them. He’s just here as an observer, to support Jemma and to make sure her brain doesn’t melt. This is for the two of them. For Fitzsimmons

“Fitz.” Her voice breaks over his name, and her best friend whirls around, his pen dropping from slack fingers and papers drifting to the floor. It doesn’t look like he’s breathing as he stares at them.

“Fitz,” Jemma repeats, and Trip doesn’t think that, given a hundred years, she could have said anything that counted for more.

Then they’re back in the cave, Jemma leaning heavily against his side, trying to keep herself awake. He presses a kiss against her hair and helps her lie down, covering her with both her blanket and his own. In a few minutes, she’s asleep and Trip goes back to Fitz, who is still staring at the spot where Jemma had been standing. He waits for him to speak, not sure what exactly he could even say to him.

“She was wearing different clothes,” Fitz finally says after a few minutes.

“What?”

“Before, when she- she always looked like- she was always wearing the same clothes. But she was wearing a different outfit there. Which means that- it means that that was really her. That she’s alive.”

“Yeah.”

“Which means,” Fitz says, turning to look at Trip where he’s standing next to him, “Which means that you- that you’re-.” He doesn’t finish, but Trip grins anyway. It feels good to finally have the truth out there between them.

“We’d really like to come home, soon, if possible. We’ve almost got our end figured out.”

Fitz gapes for a few more seconds before he shakes himself, turns back to the plans spread out on his desk, “And I’ve almost got this side. I just need to figure out how to, how to anchor myself here.”

“It’s gonna be hard.”

It feels like something that needs to be said, even though it’s obvious. Fitz nods, looks up at him with new light in his eyes.

“Then we’ll do what’s hard.”

—————

Fitz really thinks that after three and a half months, he should have a better plan than this. Almost definitely. But what he does have is a complicated system of what are basically just super strong bungee cords anchored at multiple points to all four walls of the room and attached to a thick belt around his waist, and a lot of hope.

The door to the case is open, and at any moment the rock is going to splash down around his feet. Fitz is going to reach into it, and hope like hell that Jemma is reaching back. He is exactly sure about only one part of this, and it’s the one that could have catastrophic consequences.

But yeah, lots of hope.

He forces himself to breathe, counting up to ten and back down, and tries to get his hands to stop shaking. The rock follows a sort of schedule that he’s managed to figure out over the past month with painstaking recording, but the gate opening happens in more of a window than a specific point in time, so he’s just waiting.

Fifteen minutes after he’d opened the door and five minutes after he’d really begun to think that the rock and the gate and maybe the entire universe itself was against him, and as long as he stood here, wanting the gate to open, it never would, it happens. The rock liquefies, sliding around his feet and even as everything in him screams to run, Fitz reaches forward. It sloshes back, and he can hear _one-two-three_ of the anchors in the walls come out as it solidifies around his arm.

And then the waiting really starts.

————–

They’d gathered up all the research they’d done and stowed it in a satchel the aliens had given them, in case they ever needed to deal with the gate again and because, in Trip’s words, _Jemma Simmons would never discard research just because she was stranded on an alien planet and desperately trying to get home_. Some of the aliens had come to see them off and Trip and Jemma had both hugged them goodbye, even though they mostly just seemed confused by the gesture.

Now, they’re standing in front of the back wall of the cave, Trip’s arm around Jemma’s shoulders and hers around his waist; he has the bag of not quite paper and she’s got her free hand stretched out so that her fingers just brush the surface of the gate. When it opens on this side, it collapses inward instead of outward, and Jemma’s breath catches as the black stone falls away to reveal a familiar hand.

She wraps her own hand around his forearm, holding on as tightly as she can, and her breath comes rushing back as fingers close around her own arm as the rock rolls back towards them, solidifying. Jemma gasps as it digs into her skin, but she can still feel Fitz’s grip beyond the pain and Trip turns just enough to press a kiss against her hair.

“Stay calm, we knew this might happen, yeah? You okay?”

“It- it hurts,” she says, her voice shaking and Trip presses another kiss to the top of her head. There’s blood clearly visible on her arm where it disappears into the stone.

“I’m sorry, Jem.”

“It’s o-okay. I’m worried- worried about him.” She can feel his arm shaking underneath her fingers, and wishes she could tighten her fingers, wishes she could pull him closer, wishes she could hold him, but there’s still a universe or several between them. So she just holds on.

Trip laughs, just once, “Of course you are.”

“I have-have you. You’re here w-with me,” she says, gasping as the pain radiates down her arm, “He’s- he’s- Fitz is alone.”

“He’s strong. He’s strong, Jem, you know that. You both are.”

“He’s alone.”

Trip sighs, “I’ll go check on him, okay? You just hold on.”

“Can you- can you without fall-falling over or passing out? If your- your brain melts just minutes before we go home, I’ll- I’ll do something very un-unpleasant.”

“I’ll be careful. I’m just going to check on him.”

“Be-be careful.”

“Hold on, Jemma.”

————–

“Hold on, Fitz.”

He’s got his forehead resting against the rock, and in the small area of the fiberglass case, the coppery scent of blood hangs in the air.

“Is she- is she okay?”

“Yeah. Well, she’s as okay as she can be right now. She’s holding up. Worried about you.”

“I’m f-fine.”

“You’re bleeding. And shaking. And stuck in an alien rock.”

“I’ve got- got her. And-and you. I’m fine.”

“Okay. I’m gonna go back now. But I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

Fitz just nods, his forehead still resting against the rock.

—————

He can feel his pulse thumping in the bend of his elbow, at the point just before his arm disappears into the gate. He can feel the way that the stone is cutting into his skin, and the burning all along his forearm inside the rock. But he can also feel Jemma’s arm under his fingers, and her fingers around his arm, and that’s what is most important, by a long shot.

Fitz has lost all track of time. The only things he’s really aware of is the cool feeling of the rock against his forehead, and Jemma’s arm under his fingers. He forces himself to keep breathing, even as his head starts to spin. The dizziness means that for a few seconds he doesn’t realize what’s happening as the rock starts to collapse in front of him again.

And then he tugs.

He ends up on his back, and he lays there for a second, terrified of looking up. But he’d just reached across the universe, he’s pretty sure, and he figures he should at least see if it did any good.

Jemma is sitting in front of him, blood all down one arm, looking exhausted, and he gets about two and a half seconds to enjoy that sight before she launches herself at him. He’s on his back again, her weight settled on his chest and her face pressed against his neck, and yeah, this is definitely better. Fitz is just going to lay here for a while and hold onto her as tightly as he can.

Eventually, they both sit up, although Jemma keeps her face pressed against his neck and Fitz still has both arms wrapped around her, but sitting up means he can see Trip, leaning back on both hands and grinning at them.

“Earth, man. That’s pretty great,” he says, “This is Earth, right? S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t decide to start a space station base or anything?”

“Just shut up and get over here,” Fitz says, reaching for him at the same time that Jemma does, and they both tug him into the hug.

And then it’s just the three of them, sitting there, hugging. It’s nice. It’s great. Fitz is trying to remember if anything in his life has ever been this great.

After a few minutes, Fitz becomes aware of an alarm going off somewhere and Trip speaks up.

“Listen, the hugging is great, and Earth is great, but do you think that maybe we could vacate this particular part of it? I just think that our chances of landing on a planet with friendly aliens two times in a row are pretty slim.”

————-

She and Trip end up in quarantine, which makes sense, of course, which is why she thinks that she should probably not be so glad that about four seconds after everybody else leaves, Fitz disables the alarms and breaks into the quarantine area. Apparently three and a half months on an alien planet, on top of everything else that has happened to her, has completely destroyed any desire to follow rules. At least right now, at least in this place, and so she reaches for him.

Jemma really just meant to hug him. She’s pretty sure that, when she reached out for him, she just meant to grab onto him and hold him for the next several hours at least, and possibly for the next several days. Except, once she has the fingers of one hand curled into the seam at the shoulder of his t-shirt and the other hand at his neck, she just sort of… kisses him. She steps forward and tugs him toward her and then her mouth is pressed against his.

This wasn’t part of the plan. There’s a whole list of things within her list of things she needs to say to him that she was specifically going to say before she did this. At least ten or eleven things that she was definitely going to say to him before this happened. Except she hasn’t said any of those things and she has kissed him, and she doesn’t regret it in the slightest.

Fitz gives this sort of shuddering sigh thing when she pulls away from him, and she definitely does not regret it in the slightest. Jemma immediately begins making plans to get him to do that as often as possible for the foreseeable future. And the unforeseeable future. In all possible futures, she wants Leopold Fitz to do that little shivering, shuddering sigh as often as possible, and she wants to be close enough that she can feel it brush past her lips.

Tomorrow, there’s going to be a lot to do. All three of them probably- definitely- need to talk to some sort of professional, and at some point, probably not tomorrow, but at some point, she would like to get back to some sort of work. She is going to say at least some of the things on her list to Fitz, and she’s going to say some things to Trip that you can’t really say when you’re going to have to spend the next few months living in a small cave with someone.

Jemma wishes she could have more certainty than all these _somes_ , but for now… for now it’s enough.

It’s enough that Fitz is here, his forehead resting against hers. It’s enough that Trip is here, grinning at the two of them like an idiot.

It’s enough that they’re home.

————–

Fitz isn’t entirely sure what’s going on.

He’s not displeased with things, it’s just that he’s just sort of in a daze. Jemma seems to be laughing at him about it, but since she’s _here_ to laugh at him about it, and because she was here and she’d kissed him, he doesn’t really mind that much. Trip is also laughing at him, and them, he’s pretty sure that he is laughing at both of them, but since it is somehow an even bigger miracle that Trip is here, he really doesn’t mind. Not even when he wraps one arm around Fitz’s neck so he can pull him close and press a firm kiss against his temple.

There’s two beds in the quarantine area, but, without a word between them, they all three curl up on one of them. It’s a little crowded, or more than a little crowded, but Fitz likes that, Jemma’s back pressed against his front and his back against Trip’s. Trip drapes his arm over both of their waists, and it takes Fitz and Jemma a few fumbling attempts to figure out how to tangle their fingers together and arrange their arms comfortably. It makes Fitz laugh.

“What?” Jemma asks, her voice already soft as she relaxes towards sleep.

“Nothing. Just- we held hands across an entire universe, and yet we couldn’t figure it out lying next to each other,” he mumbles, pressing his lips against the soft skin behind her ear. Trip laughs, and Jemma elbows Fitz softly in the ribs, the movement drawing his attention to the bandages around both their arms.

They’ll have matching scars, he realizes. Matching scars around their forearms, as though the universe itself has marked them _the same_. Maybe that means something. Maybe it doesn’t. But they’ll have them.

He’ll think about it tomorrow. For now, it’s enough that Jemma’s fingers are warm between his and one of her ankles is twisted around one of his. For now, it’s enough that Trip has rested his forehead against the back of Fitz’s neck, and that his arm is long enough to reach over both him and Jemma. It’s enough that they’re here.

It’s enough that they’re home.

————-

“Trip?” Fitz mumbles, and Trip hums in recognition, “Thanks for taking care of her.”

“She took care of me, too.”

“I know. I already said thanks for that.”

“Oh.”

That’s something. This is something, to be here with them. To be here, specifically, with the two of them. Something nice.

“Go to sleep, Fitz,” he says after a few moments of appreciating the something nice that’s happening here, and then he leans down, pressing his lips against the warm, soft skin at the back of Fitz’s neck for a few seconds before he tugs himself a little closer to the both of them and rests his head against Fitz’s back.

He’s never going to take beds for granted ever again. He is going to make what he’s very sure is going to be a very long list of things he’s never going to take for granted ever again.

Tomorrow, he’s going to lay in this bed all day and watch _Sportscenter_ and eat all sorts of food with names that he is totally able to pronounce, and Fitzsimmons are going to be there, he’s pretty sure. He’ll explain all the sports stuff they don’t get. Jemma and he will tell Fitz about just how great toothpaste is and maybe they’ll teach him to play Honk-Honk. That’s for tomorrow though.

Tonight, it’s enough that they’re home.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve decided I can’t be bothered to apologize for anything in this fic; not for the friendly aliens or the cuddling or the obvious references to at least two episodes of the West Wing, if not more, or the blatant disregard of 3x01 (I’ll start to respect canon when canon starts to respect me).
> 
> The title comes from Brothers by Penny and Sparrow, which is one of my top platonic TripFitz songs, although if we are all even just a little bit honest with ourselves, this is not entirely platonic TripFitz.
> 
> This fic was something that I conceived of during the hiatus but didn’t write because I had no desire to write anything even this close to canon and also because I was writing three very large AUs that I was concentrating on. But then during my liveblog, I told Juliana about the fic and she was said ‘Write that.’ And my brain said ‘You’re writing three huge AUs that you really enjoy and also attending college.’
> 
> And my heart said, ‘Life is short, make your friends happy.’ So I wrote it, because I’m that sort of person. And because I was writing it for Juliana and because I had already revealed the ending and that Trip was not just an hallucination, the fic changed into something where Jemma had a much bigger obvious role and then got much longer and thus took longer to write.
> 
> I hope it was worth it, Juliana, and, uh, I guess however many more of you read this. And remember that life is short and you should try to make your friends happy whenever you can.


End file.
